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ScoutShield uses technology from LookingGlass’s 2015 acquisitions of CloudShield and Cyveillance to create a Threat Intelligence Gateway that integrates with the LookingGlass ScoutVison threat intelligence platform.

A.J. Shipley, LookingGlass’s Vice President of Product

Reston VA-based LookingGlass, a security vendor focused on threat intelligence solutions, has announced the commercial availability of their new LookingGlass ScoutShield Threat Intelligence Gateway. It is a security appliance which operationalizes threat intelligence into an organization’s network.

“ScoutShield provides new functionality by leveraging existing products to deliver more value than the sum of the parts,” said A.J. Shipley, LookingGlass’s Vice President of Product.

LookingGlass was formed late in the last decade, and their main focus over their existence has been on threat intelligence security for very large enterprises and the U.S Federal Government. The Department of Defense is a customer. The ScoutVision threat intelligence platform has been their flagship solution. In 2015, however, they made multiple key acquisitions which became the genesis of the ScoutShield offering.

“We acquired CloudShield, which gave us the appliances for this, and Cyveillance, which gave us the data feeds and subject matter experts,” Shipley said. Kleissner and Associates, a global botnet monitoring specialist, was the third acquisition which contributed to the mix.

“When all these are put together, we have an extremely secure appliance with extremely high quality data that goes into it,” Shipley said. “Customers have told us that our data is best out there from a threat perspective.”

Threat intelligence gateway products are a new category, which are designed to work with traditional firewalls, rather than replace them, and are focused on identifying and stopping rapidly emerging attacks.

“They augment typical firewalls while not being hindered by their limitations,” Shipley said. “We know that the peak phishing period is five hours after a domain goes active. Trying to update a firewall rule set in five hours at a large organization is simply impossible. ScoutShield is able to let all traffic flow through it, except for that which we have positively identified as malicious, as we can be extremely surgical because of our high quality data. This allows us to provide protection within that five hour window,”

“ScoutShield is absolutely critical to our strategy of operationalizing threat intelligence, integrating everything in real time,” Shipley said. “It has the ability to ingest a lot of data through the threat intelligence platform, and point and click to bring in policies down to where box is sitting at the customer premise.”

So where does the channel fit into this? LookingGlass traditionally had a direct sales model. So did Cyveillance. CloudShield, however, had a channel model.

“Because CloudShield sold mainly to the federal government, they were channel because key channel partners and their relationships are critical to sell into the federal government,” Shipley said. “So until about eight months ago, LookingGlass sold direct except for those CloudShield appliances being sold into the federal government. At that point, we hired Laurie Potratz as Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances and expanded into commercial and international markets. The international market is entirely channel. We have also added domestic channel partners as we look to scale beyond the federal government.” The company established a channel program, the LookingGlass Cyber Guardian Network. Late in 2016 they expanded it to include Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs).

“The model for ScoutShield is very channel friendly, whether for an MSSP provider reselling phishing detection and take-down services, or a traditional VAR,” Shipley said.

He also emphasized that it isn’t just limited to very large enterprises.

“We think we can match well to any potential prospect out there, from a credit union looking to protect a mobile banking app, up to the large enterprises.”

Today, Looking Glass has just over 30 channel partners.

“Our goal is to have a very robust and broad channel program, because it’s the best way to scale,” Shipley said. “Having a channel also helps us more broadly because channel forces a discipline on building product. You need to make things easy to deploy to make them channel-ready. Being easier to work with, in turn, leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction. So the channel expands reach of sales organization, and enforces rigor in our customer-first mentality.”